Beyond Being and Intelligibility

CHAPTER ONE BEYOND BEING AND INTELLIGIBILITY In recent decades there has been a surge of interest in “negative theology,”1 of which Dionysius is a leading exponent, and hence many studies of this feature of Dionysius’ thought.2 Rarely, however, do such studies attempt to present the philosophical argumentation that underlies his teachings. The doctrine that God or the One, the first principle of reality, lies beyond being and beyond thought, for Dionysius and his Neoplatonic forebears, is not an ungrounded starting point or an article of faith but rather the conclusion of a rigorous sequence of philosophical reasoning, and only by following this argumentation can we truly understand the doctrine’s meaning. Neoplatonic and Dionysian “negative theology” and “mysticism” is an aspect of rational metaphysics, and must be interpreted and evaluated as such. The aim of the present chapter, therefore, is to expose the philosophical grounds and meaning of Dionysius’ negative theology by showing how the argument behind it is developed in the Greek philosophical tradition that Dionysius draws on and continues. The foundational principle of Neoplatonic thought is the doctrine that to be is to be intelligible. The identification of being,t¿ ∫n, that which is, as that which can be apprehended by n¬hsiV, intellection, is the basis not only for the Platonic and Neoplatonic identification of being as form or idea (eΔdoV, Îd°a), and the associated view that the sensible is less than completely real, but also for the Neoplatonic insistence that the One or Good, the source of reality, is itself “beyond being.” To arrive at a philosophical understanding of Dionysius’ doctrines of being and of God, therefore, we must begin by examining the meaning and grounds of this principle, and then see how its implications are unfolded in Platonic and Neoplatonic philosophy. The idea of being as intelligible is implicit in Greek philosophy from the very beginning. The philosophical enterprise, insofar as it is an endeavor to think reality as one whole, always already presupposes that being as such is able to be grasped by thought. This presupposition is first made explicit by 5 © 2007 State University of New York Press, Albany 6 THEOPHANY Parmenides: “For you could not know that which is not, for it is impossible, nor express it; for the same thing is for thinking and for being [o®te gΩr œn gno√hV t¬ ge m‹ ÷¬n (o¶ gΩr ™nust¬n)/o®te fra´saiV. T¿ gΩr a¶t¿ noeƒn ⁄stin te ka¥ ei’`nai].”3 Parmenides indicates here, first, that thought is always the apprehension of some being. For whatever is thought is necessarily thought as something, i.e. as some being. T¿ m‹ ÷¬n, that which is not, cannot be thought, for to think absolute non-being would be to have no object or content for thought, to be not thinking anything, and hence not to be thinking. We may recall here the Thomistic principle, derived at long re- move from this Parmenidean insight: “Being falls first in the conception of intellect . Wherefore being is the proper object of intellect [Primo autem in conceptione intellectus cadit ens . Unde ens est proprium objectum intellectus].”4 Whatever is thought is thought most basically and generically as some being, which may then be specified by various determinations. Second, Parmenides in this passage affirms that being extends no further than that which can be apprehended by thought, that there cannot be anything beyond the reach of thought. It would be incoherent even to postulate an unintelligible being, a being that cannot be thought, for to do so would already be to think such a being. Parmenides’ fragment thus brings to light the obvious but vital point that to think being, that which is, at all, is already to presuppose its intelligibility. To think being is to think it as thinkable. Indeed, it follows not merely that being and intelligibility are coextensive, as Parmenides plainly asserts, but that intelligibility is the very meaning of being: by being we can only mean “what is there for thought,” for since thought cannot extend to anything else, “anything else” is mere empty noise—in short, nothing (t¬ m‹ ÷¬n). If ‘being,’ “that which is” considered as one whole, has any meaning at all, then it necessarily means “that which is available for thinking,” i.e. that which is intelligible. That which is, then, is (wholly and solely) that which can be apprehended by intellection, and intellection is (wholly and solely) the apprehension of that which is. Plato’s understanding of being as form or idea (eΔdoV, Îd°a) is a direct consequence of this identification of being and intelligibility. Although in many ways critical of his awesome father figure Parmenides, Plato wholly adopts the doctrine of t¿ ∫n, that which is, as t¿ noht¬n, that which can be apprehended by intellect, and makes it the center of his metaphysics (e.g. Phaedrus 247c7–8; Timaeus 27d6–28a3). Consequently, what is real, for Plato, is the “looks” (e≥dh) that sensible things display to the mind, the universal natures or “whatnesses” that characterize them and can be definitively grasped in thought.5 The forms, and only the forms, are “really real,” precisely because they and only they are altogether intelligible. Form is “what is there for thought,” and therefore it is t¿ ∫n. Its complete reality consists in its perfect intelligibility. Conversely, sensible instances, on Plato’s view, are less than really real in that they are constituted as multiple appearances of the unitary forms, apprehended not by intellection but by sensation and opinion © 2007 State University of New York Press, Albany BEYOND BEING AND INTELLIGIBILITY 7 (d¬xa), the apprehension of appearance rather than reality (see esp. Republic 476a4–7). As appearances or images, sensibles are not mere illusion, or nothing (as Parmenides may have believed), but neither are they being itself, the reality which appears, the universal natures apprehended by intellect. They are rather, as Plato says, “in between” “that which altogether is,” i.e. intelligible reality, the forms, and “that which altogether is not,” i.e. nothing. The “in between” status of sensibles, qua appearances, and the perfect reality of the forms, are together correlated to the mode in which each is cognized. “That which altogether is [t¿ ...pantelÍV »n] is altogether knowable, while that which in no way is is in no way knowable” (Republic 477a2–3), whereas “if something should appear such as at once to be and not to be, this will lie in between that which purely is and that which wholly is not, and neither knowledge nor ignorance will be about it, but again what appears between ignorance and knowledge,” i.e. opinion (Republic 478d5–11). Plato’s levels of being are correlated to levels of cognitive apprehension, and this is just because being is identified with intelligibility. Contrary to Parmenides, however, Plato regards being, qua intelligible, not as simple but as complex, a multiplicity of interrelated forms. He argues, explicitly in opposition to Parmenides, that “relative non-being,” or difference, must be included in the altogether real. Each form is not any of the other forms, i.e. is different from them, and thus shares in Difference (Sophist 255e4–6, 258d7–e3). Difference, no less than identity, is necessary for and constitutive of being. But this doctrine of being as an internally differentiated multiplicity of forms is itself a consequence of the intelligibility of being. As Plato points out, the forms are intelligible only in relation to each other, by the method of “collection and division,” whereby the less universal forms are identified as differentiated specifications of the more universal, and the more universal forms are understood as unities overarching and pervad- ing a multiplicity of less universal ones (Phaedrus 265c8–266c1; cf. Sophist 253b8–e2). The forms’ differences from and relations to one another are necessary conditions for their intelligibility. “For through the interweaving of the forms with each other discourse [l¬goV] comes to be for us” (Sophist 259e5–6). Thus, it is precisely as intelligible that the altogether real must be a multiplicity of distinct, interwoven forms. Plato’s doctrine of the Good as that which “provides” being is also grounded in the identification of being and intelligibility. In his well-known criticism of Anaxagoras in the Phaedo, Socrates says that when he first heard Anaxagoras’ claim that “intellect [no£V] is the orderer and cause of all things . it seemed to me in a certain way good that intellect be the cause of all things; and I thought, if it was so, that the ordering intellect orders all things and establishes each thing in whatever way would be best” (97c1–6). In other words, an explanation of things as conforming to the demands of intellect necessarily accounts for them in terms of goodness. Socrates goes on to say that in failing to give explanations of this kind, Anaxagoras “made no © 2007 State University of New York Press, Albany 8 THEOPHANY use of intellect” (Phaedo 98b8–9). Plato here indicates, then, that goodness is the principle of intellectual understanding and of intelligibility itself. The intellect by nature demands to see goodness in its object in order to understand, to make sense of it. Any thing, event, action, or process can be intellectually understood only in terms of the good which is the ultimate “why” for it. And whatever can be so understood, whatever is intelligible, is so only because and insofar as it is ordered on the basis of goodness.6 Con- sequently, those “physicists” who give merely mechanical accounts of nature “think that, truly, the Good and the Right [t¿ ™gaq¿n ka¥ d°on] do not bind and hold anything together” (Phaedo 99c ).

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